


The Pied Piper's Song

by ashtraythief



Series: Underneath 'verse [3]
Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mob, Crimes & Criminals, Don't copy to another site, Friendship, Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rating May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-11-18
Packaged: 2020-12-28 22:43:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21144437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashtraythief/pseuds/ashtraythief
Summary: At Stanford, Jared found his friends. His family. And when he asked them to come to Chicago with him, they all said yes.





	1. Aldis

**Author's Note:**

> For the Underneath prompt meme. Nytekit on tumblr said: We know from the task force that Jared gained the loyalty of most of his close circle in California and then convinced them to move with him back to Chicago to be part of his business. But we don’t know it from their perspective. I’d love if we could get a story that told it from all of their perspectives how they became aware of who Jared really was and how he asked them back to Chicago. If not all POVs, whoever’s you think would be best!
> 
> I love this prompt, even though I have no idea how many of these I’ll be able to write. I started with Aldis and I’ll hope the rest will come to me later :)
> 
> Many thanks to ilikaicalie for putting up with my messy documents and betaing this fic!

Aldis was smart. And good with computers. Self-taught too, which was a problem when he applied to colleges. He didn’t go to a good school, didn’t get to do all the after school activities. His time was eaten up by keeping the house together and looking after his two younger half-sisters while his mom worked the streets. She’d had Aldis at fifteen and from there it had been a constant struggle.

Unfortunately, Aldis couldn’t put changing diapers, cleaning up empty liquor bottles, and negotiating rent extensions with the landlord on his resume.

He tried, of course, and the guidance counselor at his high school actually tried to help, but even she thought it was a long shot to get a full ride to the closest state school.

He got into a bunch of schools, good schools even, better than he thought, but no one offered more than a partial scholarship. There was no way to make it work.

But Aldis was smart. And good with computers. He thought that if his application was good enough to fool Stanford and get a full ride out of them, then he definitely deserved to be there.

That didn’t mean he wasn’t gut-wrenchingly nervous when he moved to California.

Then he met his roommate. Aldis had been around crooks and criminals his entire life and it only took him a day to figure out that so had Jared.

They carefully danced around each other for a while, not admitting anything, but they were both far away from home, trying to make something of themselves without their family’s baggage and they’d seen so much more than most of their classmates.

Eventually, Jared told Aldis about his brother in jail. Aldis told Jared about his runaway father and his street walking mother. Jared told him about his gun-running father and Aldis admitted to forging his high school documents for his college application. He was pretty drunk at the time, but he still couldn’t believe he’d spilled the beans after just two months of living with Jared.

But Jared just smiled and asked him what else he could do.

A month later, Aldis was breaking into professor’s computers to get exam keys and was changing grades in the system. He never had any contact with their clients, that was all Jared. Aldis just hit buttons on a keyboard and he liked to keep it that way.

Over the years, Jared found more people to do the contact work for him, and Chad, Rosey, and Gen weren’t only business partners, they became good friends. Aldis never really warmed to Misha, but he wasn’t keen on playing with fire anyway.

Sometime during their junior year, when Aldis went on a rant about the crappy computer security of the university’s grad school, Jared asked him if he could do it better.

What a stupid question.

Jared mulled that over for a while, then he asked Aldis what he thought about going into business together.

“Isn’t that what we’re doing?”

Jared shook his head. “No. I mean, something legit.”

“Legit?”

Jared leaned forward. “How does the FBI catch criminals?”

“With whiteboards and undercover stings?” Aldis had no idea where this was going.

Jared shook his head. “No, with taxes. That’s how they got Capone. And the mob has had the same problem ever since. All the money you make, how do you clean it? How do you live? But if you have your own legit business, you can employ all your people, clean your own money. No outside help, do everything in house.”

Aldis’ brows shot up. “The mob?”

Jared gave him a slightly sheepish look. “Cliche name, I know. But why not dream big?”

“You’re dreaming of being a mobster?” Aldis asked, a little faintly.

“I dream of making my own way,” Jared said harshly. “I dream of cleaning up my city, and doing it my way. I dream of building my own business, my own family.”

Aldis knew there was a piece of the puzzle he was missing, knew it had something to do with Jared’s mother who he never talked about, except the one time he’d said “she’s dead” in a tone that forbid any further inquiry.

“And with you…” Jared shot him a pleading look with his patented puppy eyes that Aldis had never seen fail him. “I came up with a business plan, talked to Gen about it. Cyber security is a big deal right now, you can even combine it with physical security, make it a comprehensive thing, and your skills, man, they’re unbelievable. The amount of money we can make, _legally_, is amazing.”

“A business plan?” Aldis knew it was kinda stupid to get stuck on that, but it was the most harmless thing to think about.

Jared made a throwaway hand motion. “Remember the honors business class I took last semester? The prof had some good feedback, he was pretty impressed.”

Alds wasn’t surprised. Jared was a straight-A student, without anyone’s help.

“I mean, what do you want, Aldis? What do you want to do when we’re done here? We both know you’re never gonna go work for Google, you’d die of boredom.”

Jared wasn’t wrong. Aldis was easily bored and he had a problem with authority.

“Look, let’s build a legal business. Gen’s gonna take care of the money. And in our free time, we do what we want.”

Aldis shook his head. “I avoided street crime my entire life. I’m not gonna get involved with any of that shit now.”

Jared raised his hands. “I promise you, you’ll never have to get your hands dirty. Everything you bring to the table will be from behind a screen. And you can always opt out. No strings. Just having fun.”

“With Gen?” Aldis asked. She was unbelievably short and unbelievably smart. Hard too. Gen came from old money, fit in with the rich kids in a way Aldis never would and Jared was still learning to fake. But despite all of her fancy handbags and high heels, she carried a darkness within her, same as him and Jared.

“With Gen,” Jared said.

“What about Chad? And Rosey?”

Jared tilted his head. “Chad will go wherever I go. And Mike hates the California sun. But I wanted to talk to you first.”

Aldis appreciated that. And thought about it. Going with Jared to Chicago. Building their own company. Do fun, challenging work. Do whatever he wanted. But Jared had a controlling, dominant streak a mile wide. Aldis didn’t see him sharing authority.

“What do you want to call the company?”

Jared gave him a level look. “PadaSystems.”

Aldis raised his eyebrows. “That doesn’t sound like it’s going to be ‘our’ company.”

Jared didn’t deny it. “Look, it’s going to be my name on it. My risk. And if you don’t like where things are going, you can leave any time, no harm done. But yeah, it’s going to be my show.” Jared leaned forward. “But you get complete creative freedom. You’ll design our products. You’ll create the concepts.”

Aldis made a face.

“Come on, man, we both know that you don’t like managing and coordinating.”

“Oh, that’s what it is?”

Jared shrugged. “It’s going to be like group work, just bigger. You have to wrangle people, make sure people do their jobs and stick to a timeline. Wine and dine the clients. Is that really what you want to do?”

Aldis sighed. Jared was right. That sounded horrible.

“My company. My risk. My responsibility. I swear, Aldis, I’ll take care of you, all of you. All that ugly desperation out there, it’s not gonna touch us.”

And Aldis believed him.

“So, just to be clear, you’re not firing me for playing WOW at work.”

Jared grinned. “Not as long as you get the job done.”

“Alright.” Aldis nodded. “Show me that business plan.”


	2. Genevieve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this one together with Gen's chapter in the Meet Cute. There's more here, how her parents and her uncle died, and maybe one day I'll write that, though I'm not sure where it would fit.

Jared was waiting for her in his apartment with Sushi. From Bonsai, her favorite place.

Slowly, Gen toed out of her heels, hung up her coat, and walked over to the couch. “What’s the occasion?”

Jared held out a pair of chopsticks. “You filed for graduation today, right? Just one more semester, and you’ll be done.”

Gen smiled. “Yeah.”

“Well, that’s something to celebrate.”

Gen sat down cross-legged on the couch and picked up a rainbow roll. It was delicious.

Jared went to the kitchen and came back with a bottle of white wine, poured both of them a glass.

“Okay, what do you want?”

Jared made wide puppy eyes at her. “What, I can’t do something nice for a friend?”

“I would have bought the sushi, but the white wine is just overkill.” She took a sip. “Even if it’s really good.”

He sighed and leaned back. “You haven’t said anything about what you’re going to do after you’re done with school.”

“I told you about the internship with the bank, didn’t I?”

Jared nodded. “Yeah, but that's only for the summer.”

Gen shrugged. “Kinda depends on how much I like it. I think I’d rather do accounting for a company than a bank, but I want to try it out first.”

Jared picked up a California roll and Gen watched him. She knew that he had plans. He still had another year left, but business was going well and she fully expected him to expand after college. And Jared was a smart guy, he knew he’d need shell companies and fake businesses to launder money. Gen was already helping out with that and she’d always expected him to ask her to take on a more prominent role, but so far he’d been dragging his feet. Gen didn’t know whether that was because she was a girl—there weren’t a lot of women in the business—or whether Jared thought Gen didn’t want to get her hands dirtier because of where she came from and the trust fund waiting for her as soon as she turned twenty-five.

She hadn’t confronted him yet, because it was making her mad. And left the bitter taste of disappointment in her mouth. She’d never thought Jared saw her as weak or less than because of who she was and she didn’t really want to think about what it meant if she was wrong about that. Maybe it was time to finally confront him about it.

“Why do you ask?”

Something in her tone must give her away because Jared’s head snapped up.

He watched her, face unreadably calm. He took a breath and reached for his glass, the only indicator that he was maybe nervous.

“Well, I was hoping you’d work for me when the time comes.”

Gen picked up her glass, took a sip. “I already do, don't I?”

Jared shrugged. “Not full time. Not for real. Right now, you’re helping out a friend and getting a nice bonus for it.” He reached for a folder on the table, handed it to her. “This is the business plan I put together in class this semester. Professor Keller gave me an A on it. It obviously needs some more work, but that's what I want to build on.”

Gen took the folder and read through the proposal. An IT company, focusing on security, blending cybersecurity with comprehensive building and personal plans. There were no names, but Gen could see which position Jared wanted for Aldis, Mike, and Chad. The plan was extremely thorough. Aldis was talented enough to crack law enforcement firewalls already, Mike controlled a gang of about fifteen hitters, and Chad had a sixth sense about people that had prevented more than one situation from going sideways. Jared knew how to pick them. He knew people. He’d make an excellent CEO.

“And why do you think I’d say no to this?”

She expected him to bring up her trust fund or the crimes they’d commit.

Instead, he said, “I want to go back to Chicago.” He gave her a self-deprecating smile. “And I know you’re not a fan of snow. Or rain. Or wind.”

Gen made a face. He wasn’t wrong. Gen had grown up in New York and she hated cold and wet weather. But that he would think that was a deal-breaker…

“Do you honestly think I’d say no because of Chicago?”

Jared shrugged. “You have a good life here. I know you like it. And where I want to go…. that’s a risk you don’t have to take. Chad and Mike, they don’t know anything else. But you, you have choices. You have the world at your fingertips. And you owe me.”

Gen sat up straight. “So you’re cashing in?”

Jared shook his head. “No. Absolutely not. Which is why—I want to make sure this is not me guilt-tripping you into coming along. Do I want you with me in Chicago? Absolutely. Do I want to force you? Definitely not.” He leaned forward. “I want you to come with me because it’s what you want to do. Not because you think you owe me.”

“Laundering money for a criminal,” Gen said with a smirk.

But Jared didn’t smile. “No. Being CFO of a legal business, and keeper of the ledger of whatever we do outside of that. Helping me build an empire. Getting to the top, in every way.” He took her hand. “We’re gonna rule the world, Gen, however we want. We’re going to have all the power. All of it. We both know that money and position don’t mean shit when you have to rely on the law. Not when other people can break the rules.”

Gen swallowed, squeezed his hand.

“We’re going to be the ones making the rules.” Jared’s voice was even. Confident. No room for doubt. “And the rest of the city will play by them.”

“You do know that you’re going to run into a lot of opposition if you have a woman running your books.”

Jared’s jaw tightened. “Yeah, well, they can try.”

Gen felt herself smile, couldn’t stop it. “I thought that’s why you didn’t ask.”

Jared rolled his eyes. “This is the twenty-first century. I’m not going to hide who I am and I’m not going to leave my friends behind because of who they are.”

“It’s not going to be easy.”

“If I wanted easy, I would’ve picked a different life.”

Gen reached for the glass, raised it. “Well, then. Here’s to all the beautiful winter boots and coats I’ll get to buy.”

Jared grinned, clinked his glass with hers. “You won’t regret it. We’re going to rule the world.”

She didn’t doubt him.

**Author's Note:**

> You can come find me on tumblr [here](http://ashtraythief.tumblr.com/) and on twitter [here.](https://twitter.com/ashtraythief) My ask box is always open.


End file.
